About This Book: Drawing Basics (Art-005A)

This book was written by Kristen R. Kennedy. Two people checked the book to make sure it was good: David Brooks and Diana Meehan. Kelsey Smith was the editor — that means she helped polish and fix the writing.

This book was made possible with help from a grant (money given for a special project) from a group called FIPSE, part of the U.S. Department of Education. But the ideas in this book don't necessarily match what the Department of Education officially believes, and you shouldn't assume the government is endorsing it.

Sharing This Book

This book uses something called a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. That's a fancy way of saying people are allowed to copy, change, and even use this book to make money — as long as they give credit to the people who made it, and share their new version under the same kind of license. If someone uses parts of this book somewhere else, they should say it came from the College of Lemoore in Lemoore, California.

Some pictures or content in this book came from other places with different rules, so this sharing license doesn't cover everything. Some student artwork is included with permission, but that artwork cannot be copied or shared outside this book.

About the Pictures

The images in this book are free to use, in the public domain (meaning no one owns them anymore), or used fairly for teaching purposes. Some images were made by students, and those are protected — you need permission to use them. If you own any pictures in this book and didn't agree to let them be used, you can contact the author at kristenkennedy@wccd.edu to have them removed.

About the Cover

The cover was made using artwork created by students in Art-005A/B classes between 2020 and 2024. Their teacher, Kristen R. Kennedy, also designed the cover and put the book together.

How AI Tools Helped Make This Book

Some computer programs called Artificial Intelligence, or AI, helped create parts of this book:

• A program called ChatGPT helped organize the chapters based on what students needed to learn. It helped make the writing clearer, removed repeated information, suggested helpful details, created citations (notes showing where information came from), built a glossary (a list of important words and their meanings), and helped format some assignments.
• A program called DALL-E created some of the pictures used in the book.
• A program called Grammarly checked spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Table of Contents

This book has three main parts.

PART I: DRAWING BASICS

Introduction: Learning How to Draw

• Learning Objectives (what you should learn)
• The History of Drawing
• Drawing as a Foundation for Other Art Forms
• Why Observing and "Learning to See" Matters
• The Learning Process
• Focusing on the Essentials
• How This Textbook Is Organized